Thursday, May 29, 2014

The Town of Cary, North Carolina, was the first local government community in North Carolina to partner with the Center for Priority Based Budgeting (CPBB) in implementing Priority Based Budgeting in 2013. And we couldn't be more thrilled with their "Results!"

Since then, the CPBB has partnered with Gaston County and the Town of Garner to further spread priority based budgeting far and wide across the beautiful State of North Carolina. And once again we've found the results scalable and replicable! We couldn't be more excited!

This recent article, Budgets & Verts, by Laurie Bush from the Cary Citizen details how the Town of Cary has determined the "results" the community stands to achieve and how they've tied these results to their budgeting process. An exemplary model for how priority based budgeting "focuses community resources on results." And how the Town of Cary has utilized the CPBB's priority based budgeting "to ensure that our resources align with the priorities that
Council sets for the Town."

Amazing work Laurie Bush and more specifically the Council and leadership of the Town of Cary! The Center for Priority Based Budgeting congratulates your efforts! To read the full article Budgets & Verts read below or click here!

Lori Bush: Budgets & Verts

Cary, NC — It happens every year about this time, our annual budgeting exercise. Time to discuss our next Fiscal Year (FY2015) budget that begins on July 1, 2014 and ends June 20, 2015.
Unlike the federal government, municipalities must balance our
budget and go through a process by which we get public input and balance
that with our current and upcoming needs, improvements, operating costs
and capital expenditures. You can see what you all told us by reading
the public input report.

From Town of Cary - I wrote a bit about the process last year, if you would like to read more.

Priorities

This year, Town staff has utilized a new process called “Priority Based Budgeting.” This is asystem that
we used to ensure that our resources align with the priorities that
Council sets for the Town. The process starts by defining the goals,
then drills down into those goals, identifies the programs and services
associated with accomplishing those goals, evaluating the programs, a
peer review and finally allocating costs based on those priorities.
Council and staff reviewed and finalized the goals at our Council
Retreat in January.Our Council priorities are:

Attractive Well Planned and Livable Community

Economic Vitality and Development

Effective Transportation and Mobility

Quality Cultural Recreational and Leisure Opportunities

Reliable, Sustainable Infrastructure

Safe Community

Overview of the Budget

Here is a quick overview of the items in the budget.

No tax increase, and NO additional debt

Limited revenue growth is
projected in FY2015 due to the gains in taxable real estate (our main
revenue source) being offset by losses in taxable public service
property, personal property and vehicle. (More revenue growth is
projected after FY2015)

Remember, we paid a one –time $6M
debt reduction payment in 2014, so there IS room for service expansion
for FY2015. (Meaning, if we NEED to borrow money, we COULD do so.)

The General Fund Operating Budget is $137.3M – with is a 3.1% increase over FY2014

The Utility Fund operating budget is $65M, a 4.8% increase over last year.

The Capital Improvement budget at $51.2M (a 51% drop from last year)

Utility rates will increase by 3.7% – a result of rate smoothing to pay for the Western Wake Water Treatment plan – $2.21 more per month for residents using 4,500 gallons of water.

Construct over 5 miles of new water and sewer lines ($5.3 million)

Additional 25.5 staff position – still keeping Cary at one of the LOWEST ratios of staff per 1,000 residents (8.2) among largest cities and towns in NC

Improved public access to Town information is planned, through a website overhaul, public access to Geographical based data, and new workflow software that will allow council meeting videos to be indexed

Some Highlights

The budget document is
huge, but broken up into readable components. (But it is still 350
pages!) Here are some highlights that I think folks might be interested
in, based on feedback I’ve received.

Improve the visual appeal of city streets by adding landscaping to existing medians ($150,000)
– supported by all of council, and will take about 4 years (with annual
funding of $150K) to get to all of the bare medians across town

Facilitate business development in downtown by creating a small business incentive loan program($120,000)

Spot improvement in the level of service for Town intersections and streets ($250,000)

Jon Johnson and Chris Fabian are pleased to share with you that the Center for Priority Based Budgeting officially opened its office on September 1, 2010, with its main objective being to “lead communities to Fiscal Health and Wellness.”

As most of you know, it was our desire from the very beginning of our partnership to create a not-for-profit environment that could support and sustain our work in not only providing advisory services to local governments across the country but also to find ways to continue our research efforts to better understand the fiscal conditions that are impacting local governments from coast to coast. Utilizing a business development technique found in the private sector, the Center was being “incubated” by another successful not-for-profit organization that also serves local governments. Graduating from the incubator in 2013, CPBB is now working with over 60 organizations who have implemented or are currently implementing the processes and tools of Fiscal Health and Priority Based Budgeting.

As before, we are striving to bring the principles of Fiscal Health and Wellness to all communities by teaching, coaching and guiding them in the development and implementation of our unique, creative and proven tools and techniques. We continue to improve upon our “Fiscal Health Diagnostic Tool”, which provides a quick assessment of any organization’s fiscal health status. We also continue to develop our “Resource Allocation Tool” which provides not only a mechanism to set target budgets based on our Priority Based Budgeting approach, but also serves as a way to depict how well any organization is aligning its resources with the programs and services that the community values. Our work has expanded to now include some interesting and successful citizen engagement opportunities with the communities we are partnering with in this work.

We have included our contact information below and hope that we can continue to reach out to those of you we have worked with in the past to further our research efforts as we continually strive to enhance the Priority Based Budgeting process as well as with the concepts of Fiscal Health and Wellness. We also hope to continue the conversation with those of you who have been following our work and share with you the stories of accomplishment and success from the organizations that have implemented Priority Based Budgeting. Please drop us a line anytime – we’re always glad to hear from you. In the meantime, please update your contact information and when you have the chance, check out our blog site to find out what we’ve been doing since our last conversation with you.